“You’re an expert on the jury system, too, huh?” Meyer said.
“I’m not an expert on anything,” Moore said. “I happened across a good investment, and I took advantage of it.”
“And then decided to protect it by killing—”
“The only person I killed is the man who broke into my apartment.”
“Did he know there’d be diamonds in there?”
“I don’t know what he knew.”
“Just happened to break in on you, is that it?”
“Happens all the time in this city.”
“Didn’t know there’d be dope, didn’t know there’d be diamonds.”
“I never saw him before in my life, how would I know what his motive was? He forced his way in with a gun. We struggled—”
“Yes, and you took the gun away from him and shot him.”
“Yes.”
“Guy built like a grizzly bear, you took the gun away from him?”
“I can handle myself,” Moore said.
“Only too well,” Carella said, and sighed. He looked up at the wall clock. It was ten minutes to 12:00. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go through it one more time.”
She felt stupid with a gun in her bra.
The gun was a .22 caliber Llama with a six-shot capacity, deadly enough, she supposed, if push came to shove. Its overall length was four and three-quarter inches, just small enough to fit cozily if uncomfortably between her breasts. It weighed only thirteen and a half ounces, but it felt like thirteen and a half pounds tucked there inside her bra, and besides, the metal was cold. That was because she had left the top three buttons of the uniform unfastened, in case she needed to get in there in a hurry. The wind was blowing up under the flapping black cape she was wearing, straight from the North Pole and directly into the open V-necked wedge of the uniform. Her breasts were cold, and her nipples were cold and erect besides — but maybe that was because she was scared to death.
She did not like the setup, she had told them that from the start. Even after the dry run this afternoon, she had voiced her complaints. It had taken her eight minutes to cross the park on the winding path that ran more or less diagonally through it, walking at a slightly faster than normal clip, the way a woman alone at midnight would be expected to walk through a deserted park. She had argued for a classic bookend surveillance, one of her backup men ahead of her, the other behind, at reasonably safe distances. Both of her backups were old-timers from the Chinatown Precinct, both of them detectives/1st. Abrahams (“Call me Morrie,” he said back at the precinct, when they were laying out their strategy) argued that anybody walking point would scare off their rapist if he made a head-on approach. McCann (“I’m Mickey,” he told her) argued that if the guy made his approach from behind, he’d spot the follow-up man and call it all off. Eileen could see the sense of what they were saying, but she still didn’t like the way they were proposing to do it. What they wanted to do was plant one of them at either end of the path, at opposite ends of the park. That meant that if their man hit when she was midway through the park, the way he’d done on his last three outings, she’d be four minutes away from either one of them — okay, say three minutes, if they came at a gallop.
“If I’m in trouble,” she said, “you won’t be able to reach me in time. Why can’t we put you under the trees someplace, hiding under those trees in the middle of the park? That’s where he hit the last three times. If you’re under the trees there, we won’t have four minutes separating us.”
“Three minutes,” Abrahams said.
“That’s where he hit the last three times,” she said again.
“Suppose he scouts the area this time?” McCann said.
“And spots two guys hiding under the trees there?” Abrahams said.
“He’ll call it off,” McCann said.
“You’ll have the transmitter in your bag,” Abrahams said.
“A lot of good that’ll do if he decides to stick an ice pick in my eye,” Eileen said.
“Voice-activated,” McCann said.
“Terrific,” Eileen said. “Will that get you there any faster? I could yell bloody murder, and it’ll still take you three minutes — minimum — to get from either end of that park. In three minutes, I can be a statistic.”
Abrahams laughed.
“Very funny,” Eileen said. “Only it’s my ass we’re talking about here.”
“I dig this broad,” Abrahams said, laughing.
“That radio can pick up a whisper from twenty-five feet away,” McCann said.
“So what?” Eileen said. “It’ll still take you three minutes to reach me from where you guys want to plant yourselves. Look, Morrie, why don’t you go in? How about you, Mickey? Either one of you in drag, how does that sound? I’ll sit outside the park, listening to the radio, okay?”
“I really dig this broad,” Abrahams said, laughing.
“So what do you want to do?” McCann asked her.
“I told you. The trees. We hide you under the trees.”
“Be pointless. The guy combs the park first, he spots us, he knows we’ve got it staked out. That’s what you want to do, we might as well forget the whole thing.”
“Let him go on raping those nurses there,” Abrahams said.
Both men looked at her.
So that was what it got down to at last, that was what it always got down to in the long run. You had to show them you were just as good as they were, willing to take the same chances they’d have taken in similar circumstances, prove to them you had balls.
“Okay,” she said, and sighed.
“Better take off those earrings,” McCann.said.
“I’m wearing the earrings,” she said.
“Nurses don’t wear earrings. I never seen a nurse wearing earrings. He’ll spot the earrings.”
“I’m wearing the earrings,” she said flatly.
So here I am, she thought, ball-less to be sure, but wearing my good-luck earrings, and carrying one gun tucked in my bra, and another gun in my shoulder bag alongside the battery-powered, voice-activated FM transmitter that can pick up a whisper from twenty-five feet away — according to McCann, who, by her current estimate, was now two and a half minutes away at the southeast corner of the park, with Abrahams three and a half minutes away at the northwest corner.
If he’s going to make his move, she thought, this is where he’ll make it, right here, halfway through the park, far from the streetlights. Trees on either side of the path, spruces, hemlocks, pines, snow-covered terrain beyond them. Jump out of the trees, drag me off the path the way he did with the others, this is where he hit the last three times, this is where he’ll do it now. The descriptions of the man had been conflicting, they always seemed to be when the offense was rape. One of the victims had described him as being black, another as white. The girl he’d blinded had sobbingly told the investigating officer that her assailant had been short and squat, built like a gorilla. The other two nurses insisted that he’d been very tall, with the slender, muscular body of a weight lifter. He’d been variously described as wearing a business suit, a black leather jacket and blue jeans, and a jogging suit. One of the nurses said he was in his mid-forties, another said he was no older than twenty-five, the third had no opinion whatever about his age. The first nurse he’d raped said he’d been blonde. The second one said he’d been wearing a peaked hat, like a baseball cap. The one he’d blinded — her hand began sweating on the butt of the .38 in her shoulder bag.
It was funny the way her hands always started sweating whenever she found herself in a tight situation. She wondered if McCann’s hands were sweating. Three minutes behind her now, Abrahams equidistant at the other end of the park. She wondered if the transmitter was picking up the clicking of her boots on the asphalt path. The path was shoveled clear of snow, but there were still some patches of ice on it, and she skirted one of those now, and looked into the darkness ahead, her eyes accustomed to the dark, and thought she saw something under the trees ahead, and almost stopped dead in her tracks — but that was not what a good decoy was supposed to do. A good decoy marched right into it, a good decoy allowed her man to make his move, a good decoy—